Anything Less Than Everything (9 page)

“T
hat’s awesome, Brooke! You were made
for that.” It was later that night, and I was talking to Aaron, of course,
while eating dinner--pepperoni and mushroom pizza, of course. I’d been
questioning my answer to Caryn all afternoon, vacillating between excitement
that she’d asked me to take on such a large project and doubt in my abilities
to succeed.

“I don’t
know...” I said. “Teaching English to teenagers is one thing; teaching decor to
a bunch of women old enough to be my mother is quite another.”

“Whatever,”
he said. “You can do anything you set your mind to, Brooke.”

I rolled my
eyes. “You love a cliché, don’t you?” I teased him.

“Always. But
it’s true. And it is truer of you than anyone else I have ever known.” The list
flashed into my mind:
#26-Gets excited about my accomplishments.
Finding
a guy just like Aaron was going to be nearly impossible. Strike the nearly.
Impossible.

“So, you’re
going to do it, right?” he asked.

“I guess so,”
I said. “I mean, I already told her I would. It’d look pretty bad to back out.”

“Good,” he
said matter-of-factly. “You’ll be great. So what else exciting happened today?”

“Nothing,” I
said, but I hesitated too long before answering, and he saw through it
immediately.

“What
happened?”

“My mother,”
I said finally. “But I’m not talking about it. The day got better as it went,
so I’d rather not go backward.”

“And now it’s
great, right?” he said, his voice teasing.

“Of course.
I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” I teased back. This friendly flirting was my
favorite part of our friendship. So many of our talks were serious in nature,
even if they were positive, so it was nice to just joke around, to laugh.

“Hang on a
sec,” he said. I could hear another guy’s voice and Aaron saying, “No, man,” in
response to something he’d said. Finally Aaron sighed and came back to me.

“Brandon is
demanding that I let him talk to you. You can say no.”

“It’s okay,”
I answered. “Put him on.”

I heard the
phone change hands and Aaron saying something, but I couldn’t quite catch the
words. “Hey, Brookie.”

“Hey,
Brandon. What’s up?” I knew Brandon the way I’d known Aaron that night at
Nana’s: by his stat sheet. I hadn’t known they were roommates at the time,
though, and I was actually surprised by that when Aaron told me. Aaron was a
quarterback; Brandon a linebacker. Aaron seemed cool and in control in
interviews; Brandon was little boy silly. So much about them, at least on the
surface, was opposite.

“Nothing
much. Aaron’s watching me like a hawk, afraid I’m going to embarrass him.”

“How would
you do that?” I asked.

“Hmmm. Well,
I could tell you the story about the time locked himself out of the dorm room
freshman year wearing nothing but a towel. Or maybe start listing all his bad
habits, like drinking juice straight from the jug, or talking in his sleep, or
letting people take his phone when he’s not paying attention (ouch). But I
promised I wouldn’t do that.”

At this I
couldn’t help but laugh. Brandon, B, as Aaron called him, was apparently the
same in real life as in the press room. He’d always been one of my favorite
players, so I was glad for this.

He asked me
several questions, interview style, such as my favorite color (green), kind of
music (anything but country, which shocked him since I'm from Nashville) and
favorite play in football. Aaron had obviously been bragging about my football
IQ. When I answered the bootleg, he gasped in mock horror.

“But that’s a
quarterback’s play. I thought you were a defensive girl. I’m hurt, Brooke,
really. I don’t know if we can be friends.” I laughed at his silliness.

I couldn’t
help but notice, though, how different his questions for me were from Aaron’s.
Brandon’s were all surface--which was fine--but Aaron’s uncovered truths about
me that I didn’t know existed or at least hadn’t planned to share. Whether they
were about types of weather or favorite school assignments or what I wanted to
be when I grew up (Ha!), the questions caused me to open myself to him, and in
turn learn more about my friend--and myself.

I knew what
he was doing, of course, even as I opened my mouth to answer, but I didn’t
mind. Aaron was someone whom I wanted to allow in. That scared me a little, but
the feeling of security I got when we spoke to one another made the risk seem
worthwhile. And to think had it not been for a dreaded family dinner and one of
my sister' shook-up plans! It need would age happened. Or that I'd almost
walked away from it.

I heard a
muffled exchange on the other end before Aaron came back on the line.

“Sorry about
that,” he said.

“No, it’s
fine,” I said. “It’s nice to put a voice to the people I’ve been hearing about.
In a way it helps me know more about you.”

“Don’t you
know enough? I’m scared if you learn too much more you won’t want to talk to me
anymore. Especially if B keeps making up stories meant to make me look like an
idiot.” He was joking, but that had been exactly what I’d been afraid of,
except in reverse. But for now he was still calling, so he obviously had a high
threshold for drama.

“No,” I
replied. “I think there’s still more about you I need to uncover. And what you
see as embarrassing, I see as endearing.”

“I don’t
believe you,” he said. “But go ahead. What do you want to know?”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

I took a deep
breath. There was one part of Aaron’s life that he had kept quiet on. Something
that the events of the week had brought to the forefront. His love life. He
certainly knew everything about mine, yet he’d never volunteered any
information about girlfriends. He was easily the most popular guy on campus, so
this omission struck me as odd. Sorority girls surely giggled as he passed
through the courtyard; athletes from the women’s teams had to be making extra
trips to the training center on the chance of seeing him. But nothing.

I wasn’t sure
why I was so curious, but his lack of details on this subject bugged me,
especially since the only evidence of a love life was those disastrous
pictures. Maybe it was because he was privy to details of Spencer’s and my
relationship that no one else knew. Maybe I wanted to even the playing field.

“Why don’t
you date?” It came out a little more abruptly than I intended, but it didn’t
seem to faze him. He had to know it would come up eventually.

“I date,” he
said.

“Oh yeah?
When?” Unless he was taking girls out between the hours of two and four in the
morning, he was lying. He spent every day working or working out, every night
talking to me.

“Well not
lately, but I’ve dated girls before.”

“So why not
lately?” I could sense him squirming a bit, which made me just a tad proud.
Usually it was I on the hot seat; reversing that role was fun.

He sighed,
and I pictured him pinching his temples with his hand before running it down
his face. “Do you seriously need a reminder of what happened the last time I
came remotely near a girl?”

“I’m not
worried about that right now. I’m just asking in generalities.”

“Okay,” he
said finally, “you probably don’t remember this with all that was happening at
the time, but that day on the boat, after that idiot ex of yours showed up to
hurt you again? You asked how I knew so much about relationships.”

I remembered
every word of that conversation. I had focused on it intently in an effort to
not completely lose it. “You said that guys weren’t the only ones who could be
jerks.”

“Yeah. My
last girlfriend was a jerk. It’s made it hard to trust girls, or to even care
about finding someone right now.” I could understand that.

“Can I ask
what happened?” I couldn’t imagine anyone hurting Aaron, not because he was
invincible, but because who would want to?

“Her name was
Becca. We started dating near the end of freshman year. Nothing serious, just
movies, parties. When school started back in August, things got more serious,
but it was hard because of football. I didn’t have a lot of time for her, which
I felt bad about, but that was--is--reality.

“So things
got worse as the season moved on. It didn’t help that she hated football, and
came to the games only to socialize. It’s a huge part of my life, especially
during the season, but she refused to talk about it, watch it, anything.”

“So why were
you dating her if she hated what was most important to you?” I interrupted.

“Initially
because she was pretty, which I know makes me sound like such a guy, but she
was nice and fun to be around. It was only as we spent more time together that
I realized how incompatible we were.”

That sounded
like lots of college relationships. The next part, though, I did not see
coming.

“Instead of
dumping me and moving on, she tried to find a way to make football go away. It
was the thing that kept us apart. So towards the end of the season she told
everyone that she was pregnant.”

Um, what?
When I didn’t actually say anything,
he continued.

“Her idea,
apparently, was that if she was pregnant that I would have to quit the team, so
we’d have more time together, that football would go away.”

“Oh. My.
Goodness.” It was all I could say. How else do you respond to something like
that?

“It gets
better,” he said. “She
was
pregnant, but Brooke, I need you to believe
this, it wasn’t mine. That’s, well, we never...I’ve never...done that.”

Aaron was a
virgin. I was not surprised by this, that he
#27 Shared my values
, but
it was honestly something I’d never thought about one way or another.

“So I had a
choice to make: either deny it and look like a jerk who shirks his
responsibilities or go along with it and look like a jerk who gets girls
knocked up.”

“Great
options,” I said.

“No kidding.
I’m not ashamed of not ever being with a girl. It’s something I’ve chosen.
Something I want to wait for until I’m really ready. But at the same time, I
don’t feel the need to go around telling everyone, either, and I really don’t
feel like being the butt of every locker room joke”

“So what did
you do?”

“I pulled
away, stopped taking her calls, walking the other way when I saw her on campus.
Like I said, I looked like a deadbeat, but I couldn’t let her ruin my life or
help her lie.

“She got
sloppy with her story, though, and eventually it came out that the baby was
some guy’s from the community college across town. She left school, and I never
spoke to her again.”

I tried to
picture this girl, but it only infuriated me. Who did something like that?

“I’m still
trying to figure out how she thought this would make your relationship better,”
I said. “Obviously she knew it wasn’t yours, and she knew that you knew. Did
she think you’d just go along with it?”

“I don’t
know. I’d never had someone I cared about--and I did care about her--try to
make me look bad before. Even though now it’s obvious we were wrong for each
other, at the time I really wanted it to work.”

I wanted to
find this girl and shake some sense into her. Actually, I wanted to hit her,
not that I was the hitting type. Did she not realize that she had one of the
most amazing guys ever as a boyfriend? That I would kill to have Aaron for a
boyfriend? I mean, someone like him.

I didn’t know
what to say. It saddened me that Aaron and I had something like this in common,
but it also bonded us together in a way.

“I’m sorry
she hurt you,” I said. It didn’t seem like enough, but it was all I had.

“I am, too.
It was over a year ago, and I’m over it, but it hasn’t made it easy to want to
let girls close, you know?”

“I know.”

“And the
coaches did a good job of keeping it quiet, plus no one was really talking
about me in the press yet, but people knew, and it made me question the
intentions of any girl who seemed interested. Maybe it still does.”

“I know.”

“So that’s
why I don’t date much.”

“But Sunday?”
I asked, finally ready to hear what happened.

He sighed
again. I knew he didn’t want to talk about it, but that he felt he owed me an
explanation. “Remember Carson?”

“Oh.” So he’d
been set up. That explained so much: his complete lack of knowledge on why I
was mad, the one-sided PDA.

“Yeah. I
rarely go to parties anymore, but I’d promised the guys I would go to this one.
I didn’t know who this girl was, and wouldn’t have ever had contact with her
again had she not taken my phone and, well...”

“I guess that
didn’t exactly restore your faith in relationships, huh?” I asked.